Stylish City put Wolves in shade

By William Johnson

6:52PM BST 01 Apr 2002

Wolves (0) 0 Man City (0) 2

MANCHESTER CITY moved to the brink of a return to the Premiership in tremendous style yesterday, totally outclassing their nearest pursuers and sealing a thoroughly deserved victory with two opportunist goals by Shaun Wright-Phillips.

Their impressive conquest of Molineux raises serious doubts about the automatic promotion prospects of Wolves, who at one stage of this fluctuating season held an eight-point lead over City and looked guaranteed to end an 18-year exile from the top flight.

City were the more businesslike outfit and should have won more emphatically, particularly after a frustrated Wolves team had their captain, Paul Butler, dismissed for a second caution eight minutes from the end.

In those closing stages they peppered the Wolves goal, creating inviting openings for strikers Darren Huckerby and Jon Macken, and Ali Benarbia, the Algerian who ran the game from midfield.

&quot;I suppose we could have had a couple more,&quot; said Kevin Keegan, the City manager, who rates his current charges as superior to the Newcastle United team he transformed a decade ago. &quot;But we&apos;d have settled for 2-0 before we came here.&quot;

Keegan predicted a fantastic future for match-winner Wright-Phillips and was grateful for the darting midfielder&apos;s breakthrough 10 minutes before the end of a scrappy first half. The goal owed much to a fierce deflection off the covering Butler.

By the time Butler&apos;s afternoon of misery was completed when he tripped Huckerby to warrant a second yellow card, City had made sure of their club record 28th League win of the season when Huckerby caught Alex Rae in possession 30 yards from goal and set up Wright-Phillips for a confident low finish 10 minutes from time.

The crucial points would have been secured much earlier but for a mystifying decision by referee Graham Barber to disallow what looked a perfectly fair Steve Howey clincher from a corner by Stuart Pearce.

Wolves face an uncertain future, their momentum having been lost during the last month as West Bromwich Albion have moved into overdrive to catch them. &quot;We are not going to throw it all away now,&quot; promised their manager, Dave Jones. &quot;We&apos;ll bounce back from this. We have to.&quot;

They will have to play a lot better than this to hold off Albion. They managed only one shot on target before the interval, a Mohamed Camara free-kick that was comfortably saved by Carlo Nash, and were only marginally more threatening in the second half.

The nearest they came to breaking down a resolute City defence was when Shaun Newton met a Camara corner with an instinctive stab only for Benarbia to block.